Sony Reader Adds 500,000 Free Google eBooks

The battle in eBook land is something quite complicated. Amazon has made Kindle software yet Google fights back with Book Search for the iPhone and now the swill is muddied further by the most unlikely of partnerships.

Open source Google has played nice with proprietary loving Sony to make its scanned content of more than 500,000 titles available to all Sony Reader owners. Naturally the free content escapes copyright law which means it dates from 1923 back - perhaps to some surprise - there is actually decent literature before our own time!

Of course the move also gives the Sony Reader a full strength shot in the arm against what seemed to be a losing battle with the Kindle. The Google titles alone no less than doubles the entire back catalogue of Amazon Kindle available content!

Now the interesting thing is whether Google has pinned its colours to the Sony mast here or if it is prepared to play nice with all respectable eBook manufacturers. Now despite the short term boost it may give to Sony I hope the latter as eBook content needs to be as wide as possible and the content and hardware commoditised ASAP.

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